When attending a trade show, one of the most important goals of your exhibit booth team should be scheduling and meeting with companies you would like to work with. Your company is there first and foremost to represent your brand and create awareness about what you do, as well as your latest products.
The best ways to capitalize on all the effort of planning and attending a trade show for your company is to engage in pre-show marketing and outreach from your sales team to schedule valuable meetings with their accounts or leads.
This week we feature the insights of Anne Thornley-Brown at PlanYourMeetings.com who shares many valuable thoughts on how to prioritize and follow up on your meetings in order to properly benefit from the efforts leading up to them.
Check out these excellent tips to improving your after trade show return on investment. Let’s have a look!
Your meeting/conference is over. Attendees have returned to their homes and offices. What happens next will have a direct impact on how participants perceive the value of your event.
It’s important that they retain the valuable tips, information and strategies you offered. It’s even more important that they be able to apply what they learned.
Follow-up is one of the most important aspects of event design, but it’s also the most neglected areas of corporate event planning. Here are 11 steps you can take to achieve measurable ROI.
Before your meeting adjourns
Rule of three.Give participants time to identify three specific tips, insights or strategies they learned and pinpoint how they will use them when returning to work. It’s in the mail. Ask participants to write this information down, put it in an unsealed envelope and address it.
Do this after the last break. if you leave it until the end of your meeting, you’ll miss anyone who slipped out early.
Take note. Go through the envelopes and make note of participants’ comments. Use this information when communicating the event’s value the next year.
After your meeting
Go video.Consider posting clips with highlights from keynotes and breakout sessions on YouTube. In the real world. Include specific tips for applying the meeting content in the real world. Videos are underused but have a huge impact.
Be specific.A week after the meeting, send participants a summary of highlights from both general and breakout sessions. Be sure to include specific suggestions on how the tips, strategies and other content can be used on the job.
Seek feedback.Include the video clips and a survey, so participants can offer feedback about the meeting.
Again, be specific. Offer tangible giveaways to guarantee high participation.
You’ve got mail. Two to three weeks later, mail the envelopes with the follow-up plans to remind participants what they learned and how they planned to apply it.
Track success. Six weeks later, invite participants to share how they’re successfully applying what they learned and the benefits of using the strategies they learned. Share the stories. Publish the success stories in your company or association blog or magazine.
These simple steps will significantly boost the perceived value of your events, conferences and business meetings. And next year, you’ll be glad you have the information.
What do you think? Is planning for trade show meetings both before and afterwards as important as Anne Thornley-Brown affirms?
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